Chapter 41 — Jarrel’s Announcement and Healing Scrolls

It didn’t take long for Ria to realize that she made a mistake agreeing to have Leon stay for dinner. From the seating arrangements to the warm gazes and sappy stories, it was clear that she was being seen as a girl in love. And Leon giving her shy glances from time to time wasn’t helping matters!

Even Oscar had his own tale of love. Ria was a little shocked to find out that he was married and had a one-year-old son and a newborn daughter.

As the dinner was thankfully winding down, Jarrel announced some news, “I’m sorry, Ria. I talked with Guildmaster Verani at the Adventurers Guild, and looks like I need to go investigate those odd happenings at the farmsteads.”

Ria looked up worriedly. “What if another mob tries to stone me?”

Grandma Fana raised an eyebrow in concern. “What’s this? Is that what all that commotion was about this morning?”

“Miss Irene started it, but Jarrel came and chased them off,” Ria explained.

Jarrel made a placating gesture to his mom. “Irene’s being watched now, and Bastach has promised me he’ll keep Ria safe. Oscar and dad can take care of any thugs that come by the house. If she takes Leon or his sister with her, they can go get help should she run into trouble.”

“I wouldn’t want to put Emily in danger like that!” Ria complained.

With a sigh, Jarrel turned back to Ria. “It’s just for a week or two until I get back. I won’t ask you to stay inside the whole time, but at least don’t go anywhere alone. Can you promise me that, Ria?”

“Ranger’s with me, I won’t be alone,” Ria protested, which earned her a woof of support from her familiar, but under the pressure of Jarrel’s serious face, she reluctantly agreed, “I get what you're saying though. I’ll make sure to take someone with me when I go out.”

“Good,” Jarrel accepted her promise and turned to Leon. “I’ll be counting on you to keep Ria safe, Leon. Work hard on your training and keep a weapon with you at all times.”

“I’ll do my best, Mr. Jarrel,” Leon declared.

After dinner, Leon went home, and Ria worked on healing wards and healing barriers. The barriers turned out fairly easy to design with the main difficulty being how to make the effect last for a reasonable amount of time.

At first, she thought barriers would use more energy than wards, but because the energy was constrained to a smaller defined area, the actual usage was considerably less than the locator ward which was designed to cover a large area. That the healing effect was intended to be weak was also helpful. Even so, trying to go from a five-minute duration to a five-hour duration or longer probably wasn’t possible with the low-quality enchantable paper.

Ria experimented to find the minimum healing field that would be adequate to mend sore muscles and light injuries and noted down the power ratio and the optimal line thickness for the limiting construct. She marked the effective healing strength on the experimental scrolls. Each would still be sellable.

Initial experimenting done, she moved on to better quality parchment and paper to make a few longer lasting ones. Swapping in stamina for health, she also made a few stamina replenishing barriers that might appeal to the elderly and soldiers.

Ria was disappointed that there wasn’t enough stored energy left in her staff to make the wards for healing more serious wounds. She waffled for a few moments and finally downed an energy replenishing potion and went back to work.

Her initial designs for fast healing seemed likely to be inefficient. When casting healing spells, Ria would actively direct the magic. Scrolls couldn’t do that.

Applying a divination to direct the shaping similar to how she implemented the visual indicator on her locator ward seemed like a promising direction. With a clearer goal, she dove into designing possible implementations. Her idea of the divination defining the extent of the shape proved too complicated, but in the process, she realized that she was trying too hard. Simply defining a small sphere of effect and letting the divination actively move it to the most heavily damaged location within a bounded area would be much more effective in theory.

Excited to test out her idea, Ria quickly sketched out the control structures and inked her first ‘rapid healing’ scroll.

There was only one way to test it. She took a deep breath and quickly drew a finger along the blade of her dagger.

Ack! Blood! “Activate #19!”

The ward activated… but her cut continued to bleed. Actively sensing for the magic, Ria noticed that the target point moved with her finger but was offset. With a groan, she realized the math must’ve been off. The scroll was a failure.

“Deactivate #19.”

Ria healed her finger and admonished herself for rushing. She drew the energy back out of the failed scroll. At least, some energy was salvaged.

Carefully going over her design, she found the error, corrected it, and made a second scroll to test.

She put her cleaning rag in place before cutting herself this time.

“Activate #20.”

The magic started at the deepest part of her cut, and she could feel it rapidly moving around as the cut quickly healed.

“Deactivate #20.”

There was still a fair amount of energy left in the scroll, more than half. That even a low-quality scroll could heal cuts and minor gashes that easily was an excellent result and had Ria grinning excitedly at her success.

She used her remaining energy to make a few more low-quality scrolls and one medium-quality scroll for healing serious wounds. That was the last of her medium quality parchment. Ria sure hoped that these scrolls would sell for enough money to make a profit.

Breathing out and stretching, Ria looked out the window to realize that the moon had risen, and from the lack of lights and sounds, she must’ve worked late into the night without realizing it.

Ugh. She was expected to help out butchering dire wolves first thing in the morning too…

Well, her stamina barrier scrolls did need effectiveness testing. She chuckled and placed under her bed the one made using medium-quality paper. Her energy would return by morning, so recharging it would be a simple matter.

After cleaning up her tools, Ria quickly changed into her nightgown and snuggled under the covers.

“Activate #18.”

A gentle energy field formed around her bed, and she could feel her fatigue subtly easing. It was a nice enough feeling that she might have to make one for her own personal use.

Worries about Jarrel leaving in the morning persisted at the edge of her consciousness, but as Ria drifted off to sleep, she was mostly feeling really pleased with how much she had accomplished.